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The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project

Nature Genetics volume 44, pages 619–622 (2012)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 29 August 2012

This article has been updated

The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP) is participating in the international effort to identify somatic mutations that drive cancer. These cancer genome sequencing efforts will not only yield an unparalleled view of the altered signaling pathways in cancer but should also identify new targets against which novel therapeutics can be developed. Although these projects are still deep in the phase of generating primary DNA sequence data, important results are emerging and valuable community resources are being generated that should catalyze future cancer research. We describe here the rationale for conducting the PCGP, present some of the early results of this project and discuss the major lessons learned and how these will affect the application of genomic sequencing in the clinic.

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Figure 1: Frequency of cancer diagnoses and leukemia subtypes in children and adults.
Figure 2: Genetic landscape of 15 different types of pediatric cancers determined from whole-genome sequencing of 260 tumors and matching germline samples.

Change history

  • 09 July 2012

    In the version of this article initially published, there were errors in the labeling of Figure 1b. Specifically, hyperdiploidy was mislabeled twice as hypodiploidy, and hypodiploidy was defined incorrectly as >44 instead of <44 chromosomes. These errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

  • 29 August 2012

    An Erratum to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0912-1072c

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. Inaba, C. Mullighan, K. Roberts, S. Ramondi, S.-C. Chen, D. Pei and J. Groff for their extensive contributions to and diligence in preparing Figure 1, and we thank X. Chen for contributions to Figure 2. We would also like to thank M. Rusch and P. Nagahawatte for their contributions to data submission to EBI and dbGaP. This work was funded by The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, an NCI Cancer Center support grant (P30 CA021765), the US National Institutes of Health (NIH; U01 GM 92666 and R37 CA36401 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital), grants to R.K.W. from Washington University in St. Louis and a grant from the NHGRI (U54 HG003079 to Washington University in St. Louis).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    James R Downing, Jinghui Zhang, Ching-Hon Pui & William E Evans

  2. Department of Pathology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    James R Downing & Ching-Hon Pui

  3. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Richard K Wilson, Elaine R Mardis, Li Ding & Timothy J Ley

  4. The Genome Institute at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Richard K Wilson, Elaine R Mardis, Li Ding & Timothy J Ley

  5. Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    Jinghui Zhang

  6. Department of Oncology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    Ching-Hon Pui

  7. Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    William E Evans

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  1. James R Downing
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Correspondence to James R Downing or William E Evans.

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Downing, J., Wilson, R., Zhang, J. et al. The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project. Nat Genet 44, 619–622 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2287

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